This looks great

It looks good to me also.  I

It looks good to me also.  I have one of the old smooth side E&C SP wood chips, and visually those looked decent.  But E&C also made 3 other types of wood chip gons IIRC and some of the others with ribs looked too shallow so a shell to replace the one of those not so good gondola's could be a plus!

I am aware that IMRC is planning on offering the smooth side wood chip gon in it's Value Line, but I haven't seen any indication if they plan on upgrading any of the other former E&C/LBF wood chip gons.

The 3D printed model shown above looks very promsing.

Cheers, Jim Fitch

3D Print

     Thank you for the feedback... 

     I'm sorry to burst the 3D-printing bubble, but I had planned to have the parts laser-cut. The limitations in wall thickness, and the high cost of material turned me away from 3D printing this design. 

      The shapeways algorithm went crazy when I uploaded this design, since it is modeled in 1:1 scale... They unfortunately don't have a printer with a 62'-long bed!

     Hopefully, in the future I will have the time to modify this design to make a smooth-sided car as well... We'll have to see.

-CFNR 501

Can we get you some help?

Scaling models

     I do understand that I can scale down my model... I was joking about the 62'-long printer bed. I absent-mindedly uploaded the full-size stl file to Shapeways, which triggered an amusing chain of error messages.

     However, if you have information about a printing service that could accommodate the thin (Approx. .010") walls while retaining good print quality, I'm all ears.

Also, I decided to give a G-100-31 a try. Here is the model at an early stage:

-CFNR 501

Shapeways cost

     To satisfy curiosity, I scaled & uploaded the G-100-31 model. The estimated cost (using strong & flexible plastic) was approximately $270. (I used strong & flexible because the model is too large to be printed in any of the ultra-detail materials).

     This price seems to be ridiculously high, so if you know why it's so expensive, please let me know.

-CFNR 501

I think it is machine space

Strong and flexible has a charge for the space your item takes up in the machine. 

$1.50/part
$0.28/material cm³
$0.21/machine cm³

So even though your object is mostly empty, that empty space is taking up space in the machine.

If you look at the model in your account on Shapeways you should see its calculated volumes:

Make sure that the volumes you see are in line with what scale model you are producing. You can then do the math and verify the calculated price.

Regards,

Kevin Jones

Shapeway examples

Here is a link to HO-scale gondolas of different designers:
http://www.shapeways.com/search?q=ho+gondola&type=

There are a few SP wood chip gondolas included. The price is about $100+
Regards, Volker (Germany)

Would it be any cheaper ...

I have a 3d printer avaliable

I have a 3d printer avaliable if you want to scale it down to HO or N and I could show how it looks just pm me the STL file after scaling if you want.

Monoprice 3D printer

I purchased a 200.00 printer a few weeks ago and am using Sketchup to do a hopper. The only delimma is having to build it a few panels at a time, due to bed restrictions. 

http://www.monoprice.com/          MP Select Mini 3D Printer  

Price is not right

Something else must be going on at Shapeways. How can a hopper car body cost over $270 when others can produce diesels for half of that total? 

More woodchip cars please

If you have time in your drafting of freight cars, this is a very desired and sought after woodchip car as well. 

Shapeways cost: Update

     I took your suggestion, and uploaded the model as separate components. Here are the results:

     The price did come down, but it is still an expensive series of prints, especially when you consider that you will need two side walls, and two end walls. Note: I listed the price for the side wall and underframe as strong & flexible, as those parts were too large for any of the ultra-detail plastics. I did verify that I had scaled the models correctly.

     Some of the high cost may be due to the (relatively) high level of detail. I could remake the model with honeycomb patterns in the walls to reduce the amount of material, but with such a thin part, I think the savings would minimal.

     Trainmaster247,

     I appreciate the thought, but I'm going to decline your offer. I'm a bit nervous about sending my designs to other people... This one is "my baby" right now. I hope you  understand. 

     Splitrock323,

     I have already begun the preliminary work for a very similar car. If you could get me a model identifier, I can focus my attentions in that direction. (It looks quite a bit like a G-70-18, but I'm not sure). So far, I'm using the Diamond Scale Models car as my starting-point.

-CFNR 501

Woodchip car in 3d

Saw this link on the Atlas rescue forum. This designer built the ribs in one piece for the car, and you add the sides from sheet styrene very clever

http://www.shapeways.com/shops/kitbasher?awc=6920_1484222744_0e8f23c99b09392df23a5cb5c36a080f&utm_source=affiliatewindow&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=affiliate

http://www.shapeways.com/product/6M9LNNUK5/gn-174200-woodchip-gondola-lot16218-ho-scale?optionId=57380876

That SPS wood chip hopper

That SPS wood chip hopper looks a lot like the ExactRail HO model produced around 9 years ago - they were very nice IIRC, although I never got any, I wish I did.  Hopefully E-R will re-run them again some day.  The non-SP come up on Ebay much more often, but the SP seem to be pretty rare these day.

As for Shapeways.  For the most part, their prices are simply too expensive for my budget, although there is a D&RGW steel 3 window caboose body and underbody that the combined cost is about $90 and I am tempted to try it since the only other way to get a correct Rio Grande caboose is brass.  I may hold off since I have an idea that there may be a company planning on making an HO plastic D&RGW caboose - they are being very mum but I'm feeling a disturbance in the force.

G-70-18 Update

     Here is my progress on the G-70-18. It's still in the "blueprint" phase, but I'm getting closer to modeling.

 As always, comments are welcome.

-CFNR 501

3D Hopper ON30

It all depends on the needs of the user.  On our ON30 layout we needed a few hoppers mainly for hauling ballast.  We are not rivet counters so I printed these out on my MakerBot.  Software was Cubify Invent.  Took a little over an hour.  Russ

Nice 3D hopper

Neat project Russ. Please post pictures of the finished project.

Mini CNC

You can also make rail cars with one of those mini cnc machines.  I have a large one for doing cabinetry etc but it will take a 1/16 in bit (Dremel style) and you can do some types of cars with it. Here is an ON30 stock car.  Material is 1mm (.04 inch) plastic sheeting, software is Aspire from Vectric software.   Russ

The way to go?

SP G-100-15/17 chip gons....

Hi all -

Just happened to stumble across this thread. Nice work to the original poster re: the cad work on the SP chip gons! I thought it worth noting that Ian Clasper has also built 3D models of these cars as of a year or so ago, along with numerous BN versions. See here:

http://www.shapeways.com/product/MG2XTCEAC/sp-g-100-15-fmc-woodchip-gondola-ho?optionId=57454597

It's also worth noting that Shapeways has nothing but issues when it comes to printing these cars. The most maddening part is the inconsistency; one car will arrive in good shape, the other a distorted mess. Print resolution on each is hit-and-miss; I've carefully reviewed Ian's CAD work, and it is top notch, but these cars really need someone to take the time and orient them properly in the 3D printer to achieve top results. With Shapeways "community-sourced printing" model, that's simply not an option.

it's worth noting that there are a LOT more styrene shapes available compared to when I scratchbuilt my cars for the MR article back in the early 1990s. As such, building cars from styrene is more viable today than it was back then. The one exception to that is the corrugated non-terminating end. Thankfully, for those who want to roll their own cars, Ian offers the ends as a separate part.

http://www.shapeways.com/product/7MAN2KTWA/g-100-15-17-ends-for-scratchbuilding-ho?optionId=61285137

Woodchip gons remain a favorite SP freight car of mine, and I can't wait for the 3D printing tech to finally catch up (in price and quality) to what can be done in a decent CAD program. I want a fleet of these things, and time today doesn't permit me to build a large number.

BTW, I've sent Ian the link to this thread, so hopefully he'll chime in here with his own findings on these cars.

-Rick

Those ends...

If someone could combine those ends with some decent scratchbuilding instructions,... I might actually be crazy enough to try it. I think all the outside framing is essentially the same size. 

I wonder if there is anything out there that would be suitable for the underframe without a whole lot of modifications...?

Underframes...

Ian covered that part too...

http://www.shapeways.com/product/ZBPSTW3WT/g-100-17-ho-chassis-for-scratch-builders?optionId=61292321